First Hike with Bella

 

First hike with Bella.  Maybe I will get out more now that I have a good hiking buddy.  Springer Spaniels are the best.  I'll never settle for less again.  :)

I'm having a lot of piriformis pain and it is slowing me down.  Physical therapy helped some but not enough.  I'm trying a chiropractor now.

We caught two little trout. 

The gate was open at the start of our hike but we parked outside the gate and hiked.  Good that we did,  poor guy got locked in.  I was able to tell him who to call to let him out and exactly where he was.  They told him it would be a few hours.  I hope they don't charge him.  Shame on the loggers who left the gate open and did not post a sign saying it would be locked. 

6 miles round trip with about 300 feet elevation gain

Lake Dead Fish and Lake Slimy Egg

 

Back to these two lakes for the first time since I returned to the states.  My favorite route in was much more overgrown, I probably won't go that way ever again.  We opted to take a much longer route out to avoid brush crashing and wading in the dark.

Fishing was good.  I had never thought to fish here before, but that was the goal today.

I'm about to start doing a lot more hiking.  My daughter wants to get into good enough shape to go to Mildred Lakes again.  That is going to take some work.  We are both very out of shape.  We hope to motivate each other.

We will do more difficult hikes until we are in shape for Mildred.  We are also on fishing kick so we will be combining fishing with hiking as much as we can.

We both eat what we catch, we kill it fast and we don't use live bait.  We agree that catch and release fishing is cruel.  We also know that using live bait is cruel.  

Today we caught 6 rainbow trout between the two of us.  I also had a bite on a bass set up but never saw the fish to know if it was a bass.

We decided we did not want to get up early for the best morning fishing hours so we went for the evening.  We did not make it back to the car until midnight and the entire hike out was in the dark.

After this we will go for the morning fishing.  I did not feel safe driving that late, my body wanted to sleep.  Also on the way home my daughter was passed by a car driving in the wrong direction on the highway between Bremerton and Gorst!  I'm so glad she was not driving the left lane when that happened. 

I only brought my iPhone to take photos with and it is not playing nice with my PC today, so no pictures to share for now.

8 miles with 200 feet elevation gain and I am sore today.

Lake Slimy Egg

 

I don't ever post the real name of this lake or directions for this hike.  I will post them soon though. This hike is not a secret, but still I don't like to advertise it.

This was my first time going by bike. I wanted to place a geocache and not have to carry it on my back and I wanted to sleep in, so taking the bike was the answer. 

At the the start of this hike and bike I was hurting.  Sciatica is back, but exercise helps.  By the end of the hike I was in much less pain.

I had a nice long break at the lake since I was on my bike and had plenty of time to ride out.  Some ATV riders destroyed the serenity of the the lake for a good 15 minutes before they even arrived.   When they saw me they must have been surprised though ATV's are not allowed here and on the way out they were much, much quieter.  I was glad that they made less noise.  

I was nearly run over by a brush picker van as I rode out, they were going way too fast and did not slow down at all as they passed me on the narrow gravel road.  I've never had someone pass me at that speed on a dirt road before.  I shouted a choice expletive at them but doubt they heard me.

After I got back to my car I saw an identical van stop to unlock the gate and go out.  I don't know if these were the same ones who nearly ran me over or not.

They waved as they drove off, maybe they know me from around town.  

I forgot to pack noodles but I realized that before I left the car so I grabbed a can of oysters out of my car and had them instead.  It was cold at the lake so I heated them up over my pop can stove.  I drank three hot cuppas while I was at the lake so I could stay warm enough to be able to linger there. 

Lost all sense of space and time in the enchanted swamp

Got  my camera fixed by buying a junk camera and swapping out the parts.  I decided to go back to the swamp with my camera even though the peak of fall colors has passed.   

There are no landmarks in the swamp, so I tend to get turned around there, I drew a route to follow and put it in my GPS before I started.

I got off to a very late start, I got up at ten and did not hit the brush until almost 2:30!  

My plan was  to slowly meander around the swamp taking photos while making my way towards my lunch destination. 

Before I knew it I was way off route.  My GPS made it look like I had been going in circles, but I thought the circles were from the time  I went in there in 2016 and walked in circles.

When I got home I realized those were new circles that I  made.  I made several circles and  I never made it to my lunch spot. 

Thanks to getting so far off route, I did a lot more brush crashing than I had planned, but I also discovered an old road complete with old trash.

It rained briefly while I was walking in circles so I hung my tarp over a few arched vine maples and had coffee and a dog biscuit out of the rain and in comfort.

When I got to Lake Quilcene I saw that it was darker than expected.  I looked at my GPS and saw that it was 5pm!  

Sunset was in one hour and I was three miles from my car. Whoops. 

I decided to stop and have my coffee and snack and turn around right there.  I brush crashed all the way to the lake, but I walked out on the road as I don’t care to brush crash in the dark.

I had to headlamp hike for half an hour, I made it out one full hour after sunset.  For whatever reason, I was not very spooked hiking out in the dark this time.  

Maybe I was too tired, or maybe it was the openness of the road, I really don’t know.  

For the most part I was able to think about things other than mountain lions.

I did make a point of making some noise though so there would be no chance of startling a giant cat.   I make noise by singing this song from Barney: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6cm7ALC1BAE  I read that cougars are most active at dawn and dusk and there have been a couple of cougar attacks in this state recently.

Sage was wearing her reflective orange vest so I pulled out her little light that is made to attach to it.  The light is kind of cheerful too look at and makes it easier to see Sage when she runs away to chase all the things she can smell in the dark.

I did not get as many photos as I had hoped with my late start and it being too dark to take photos on the way out.

6.5 miles with 250 feet elevation gain.  3.5 of those miles were in the brush.

Green was the plan, yellow is what actually happened

Coffee under a tarp in the swamp

Twilight coffee at the lake before the long dark hike out

Swamping

Back to the swamp for some fall colors and some flash photography.  My plan did not go as hoped though.  I took the wrong brush crashing route to get into the swamp and my camera broke.   

The hot shoe fell off my camera and is no where to be found!  I sat down and figured out how the hot shoe works and I got it to fire my flash controller by cutting part of a tea candle holder to fit inside the area where the hot shoe goes.  I could not how ever find a good hands free way to get my flash controller to stay attached to the camera.  I spend quite a while working on this problem.

My camera is a Ricoh GR II and I need to find a broken one to buy for parts so I can get  a new hotshoe.  A GRI or a GRII will have the same parts.

I got one picture that I liked by holding my flash controller onto my camera by hand but I really wanted a photo with falling leaves in it.  I did not have a free hand to shake a tree to make leaves fall, so that did not happen.

Next I went to the lake and found it so low that I could walk on the lake shore.  I've never seen it too low.  Big patches of sphagnum moss were exposed and dry and brown.  I hope they were not killed by the drought.

After lunch I did some silly brush crashing and then ended up doing a bunch of walking in a clear cut.

I only went about 5 miles but most of it was off trail, so I got some exercise in.
200 feet elevation gain.  I know where I went wrong and I will return to the swamp, but I will have to take a different camera with me.

Sphagnum all dried out

Sage almost became a bog body

Lunch Lake with two external flash units

     I left the house with two routes in mind, a new high route and and old low route.  I wanted to try a new route.  I say route because these are not hikes down trails or roads, they are planned routes that may follow roads or trails or may just go right through the brush.  

     When I arrived at the start about 2.5 hours drive from home, I found that the high route was snowed in.  I would have to do the low route.  I had plans to make the low route more fun though.  I packed in two flash units and a new tripod to use with my Ricoh GRII camera.

     So in spite of following a route that is really beginning to bore me I had some fun.  I also took a different route out just to mix things up.

Usnea longissima lichen

Platismatia herrei lichen was my lunch companion today

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Hydnum umbilicatum

Finally captured this rock in a way that makes me happy

I made this place look much, much nicer than it actually is.

8 miles

     My Yongnuo flash with a Yongnuo radio trigger mounted on my Ricoh GRII.  The     Yognuo flash is Nikon compatible.  The flash will only work as a manual flash on my Rocoh (no TTL) and that is all I really need.  I had no idea that this would even work, but on a lark, I decided to try it and yep, this camera triggers the flash just fine. 

     I used another identical Yongnuo flash mounted on a very small Manfrotto tripod with another identical radio trigger.  This flash is so heavy that I worry it would damage the hot shoe on my little camera if I carried it by the camera, so I carry it by the flash.

     I still don't own a full frame camera of any type and I'm not sure that I want one, they are so heavy and so expensive and have less reach.